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Let me make this clear. I love baseball. As a kid growing up the other sports seasons started when baseball ended. If there was no game seven of the World Series, whatever the date the last game of the series was to be played was the end of the baseball season. Yes, I watched the Super Bowls, the Rose Bowls, the NBA Finals, boxing but it was only filler until baseball started all over again. Then I landed the ultimate sports fans job… working at an all sports radio station. That’s when I saw sports evolve into a year round business… and if I wanted to keep my job I needed to know what was going on 24/7 in the sports world. My main beat was covering the San Diego Padres, the team I grew up following.
Image via Wikipedia
I covered the Padres for nearly twenty years until things changed for me professionally a couple of years ago. Not that I wasn’t that true baseball fan or Padres fan during those years covering the MLB, somewhere along the way I started to see the game differently. Traditions of the game started to change and at times I felt I had to help sell the direction of the game whether I wanted to see it change or not. There were players I enjoyed seeing play day in and day out and experienced some of the funniest things and not so funniest things. It was a great job! Knowing my last day covering the MLB was inevitable, I wondered how life was going to be, well post MLB job? I think those closest to me wondered the same thing. The following season I sat in the stands on opening day and watched the game as a fan (in the stands) for the first time in nearly twenty years. I had a beer, hot dog, popcorn (not necessarily in that order) sat next to my wife and being a fan came without a hitch. A bit different from what I was use to, but very relaxing and enjoyable. Three years removed from my days covering the team, things are quite normal, now we have a daughter to pass the game on to.
With the curtains almost drawn on another season, I’m prepared for whatever the sports world wants to throw my way; ultimately I am waiting for next year. Which leads me to what was going through my mind as I saw the Milwaukee Brewers play-off run end on Sunday.
I was watching the game with family and friends and as the camera panned its lens around the ballpark you could see the different emotions on the faces of the Brewers fans. I said aloud to those near me, “At least those fans saw there season go as long as it did… for Padres fans our season ended sometime in late May”. Yet, that didn’t stop me from going to the ballpark… I was there until the third to last game of the 2011 campaign… assessing the team and what is to come in 2012.
Image by SD Dirk via Flickr
As the season came to a close, I couldn’t help but look at the light at the end of the tunnel. There is a glimmer of hope. I can see it. A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to chat with a friend of mine, Randy Johnson. Johnson, formally a special assistant to Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, is now the Padres field coordinator. Not only does he run spring training he also has the task of making sure the team’s organization is following through with its game plan. I complimented him on the success the team’s minor league system had and he shed more light in my direction. Johnson reminded me how unprecedented it could have been. Four of the seven minor league teams were in the play-offs. Two of them won championships. They could have had five or six league MVP’s if guys had stayed put, but with the big league club bringing up their young they eventually produced the Midwest League MVP Rymer Liriano (.319/62/12). Two names that fans became familiar with that shined below and had a taste of the big leagues were Anthony Rizzo and James Darnell. Jedd Gyorko, Cory Spangenberg, Alberth Martinez and Yoan Alacantra were names that shed bioluminescence bouncing from one team or another through the system this past season.
Yes, these young players have a lot to prove at the sports highest level, but for now I have no reason to dim the light at the end of the tunnel. Wait til next season!
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